Media Reviews

Melanie Waddell says that part of the Republican budget battles are an effort to weaken the SEC and prevent the enactment of the Dodd-Frank regulatory reform provisions--similar to the efforts to repeal last year's healthcare reform bill. Kate McBride reminds us that Congress and an outraged public were pushing hard for a full fiduciary standard after the 2008 meltdown and brokerage industry scandals--until the brokerage industry lobbyists moved into the discussion.

On the practice management front, Mark Tibergien and Joni Youngwirth talk about marketing issues; about using (and paying) solicitors to bring in business, and better ways to generate referrals from your clients. Angie Herbers helps you navigate through some difficult staffing issues, and two finance professors offer an interesting proposal: instead of issuing bonds, why not have the government sell annuities?

Plus a good column on new telephone technology from Dan Skiles, and a brief introduction to excellence in practice management by Dan Inveen and Eliza DePardo. [Read more »] 

If you're not much of a fan of incentive trusts and the idea of controlling heirs from the grave, then you might check out the interesting two-part proposal for a different kind of trust document in the April issue of the Journal. Instead of demanding that heirs behave in certain ways, it requires them to learn and apply certain life skills before they can receive their inheritance. This isn't an issue where the parents feel comfortable with the judgment of their kids, but where they don't...

The magazine also presents the idea of a "debt policy statement," similar in concept to the investment policy statement, but outlining parameters and goals for the client's debt management.

In this Media Reviews message, we've also reviewed recent articles in The Economist, which has been asking all the right questions lately. What's the on-the-ground assessment of the impact of the devastation in Japan, and what are the economic implications? (Hint: supply chains have been disrupted everywhere; it seems that a lot of items assembled in China and the U.S. required components made in Japan.) How radical are the winners of the revolutions in North Africa and the Middle East? And do we have a mechanism for measuring these economic impacts and their likely outcomes? (No, but the preliminary evidence will surprise you.)

Finally, the magazine identifies a potentially disruptive new technology that could usher in the era of electric automobiles much more quickly than anticipated.
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This looks like a pretty good issue of Financial Planning, but... You'll notice question marks where page numbers are normally inserted. I didn't receive my issue in the mail, and asked others for page numbers, and the handful of people I called hadn't yet received theirs either. Some of them DID receive the April issue, however. I have no good explanation.

But you have links to all the articles here, including some common sense advice from Martin Shenkman on clients' insurance policies, a tech overview by Joel Bruckenstein, some good practice management advice from Stephanie Bogan and a very interesting article on advisory firms that seem to have migrated toward offering concierge services for their clients. [Read more »] 

First the good news; when you get beyond the first article (and the FPA's still-disappointing attempts at "research"), you find two nicely-written articles about how to encourage client referrals. Rick Adkins offers a nice introduction to an issue that (as he points out) gets very little attention in our conference presentations, Alice Lowenstein of Litman-Gregory and insurance consultant Peter Katt address complex issues that affect at least some of your clients, and there's a darned good contribution at the back of the magazine on how to (carefully) help clients overcome their overspending activities.

The bad news? Take a deep breath and look at the triumphant article on income annuities, showing how they just plain beat the socks off of those risky mutual funds and stocks in the actual real world. So much good in this issue, and I suspect that all anybody will remember a year from now is how the FPA's editorial team got duped again by the product folks. Sigh. [Read more »] 

It's good to see tax/estate attorney Deborah Jacobs back writing for the profession; she was one of Bloomberg Wealth Manager's best writers when the magazine was a viable print publication. I also think the Bill Bachrach and Mitch Anthony columns are very strong in this issue of Financial Advisor magazine; the one talking about success factors in the planning profession, the other about basic human nature that retirees seem to think can be overwritten when they decide to retire. [Read more »] 

It seems like very month I say that the strength of Investment Advisor is the practice management articles, and here we have a business plan on an index card, Mark Tibergien dissecting the rollup opportunities for transition planning, a very perceptive article by Angie Herbers on the difference between hiring and creating star employees, Dan Skiles on getting your clients online and helping them access performance statements and other information in a paperless format, and Tom Giachetti talking about the rules for the new Form ADV Parts 2A and 2B. All are recommended.

Alas, there were missed opportunities as well. The article on how Mark Tibergien has remade Pershing Advisor Solutions could have been really REALLY interesting, and Kate McBride's decision not to share details of the Committee for the Fiduciary Standard's meetings with lawmakers and regulators makes her "inside" account somewhat lifeless. Ah well... [Read more »] 

I think the grief planning column by Amy Florian was the highlight of this issue of the Journal of Financial Planning, although I really liked some of the real world tips in Jon Guyton's column.

Meanwhile, I get the impression that the Journal is having some difficulty attracting high-quality technical articles. Maybe advisors are too busy these days to do independent research. [Read more »] 

I wish the article by Dan Inveen and Eliza DePardo could have been longer and more detailed, but I guess for that you can always go to their latest FA Insight report. Mark Tibergien notes that many advisory firms are running multiple offices these days, which creates interesting new management challenges. And Angie Herbers offers a convincing explanation for the power of motivation in your office--with a blueprint for how to achieve it.

Dan Skiles walks us through a process for determining which document management system to purchase, and Tom Giachetti provides a checklist of compliance issues to be handled ASAP. If you’ve noticed that this is all practice management-related, well, that’s what Investment Advisor magazine does best. [Read more »] 

The highlight of this issue of Financial Advisor is the article about brokers who leave their wirehouse firm--sometimes after years of pre-planning, delivering their resignation and stepping out of their office and into their new firm in the same hour, asking members of their team to join them in a secluded meeting elsewhere in the brokerage offices at the same moment the resignation is being delivered, soliciting clients over the weekend before a temporary restraining order can be filed. It looks almost like an escape from a communist country, where there are armed guards at the border with their guns trained inward...

Meanwhile, Roy Diliberto wonders why so many advisors are trying to structure their practice so as not to have a fiduciary obligation to clients, and Joel Bruckenstein takes us on a tour of a new college planning software tool for your practice. [Read more »] 

Financial Planning magazine is still without a full-time editor, but this is a pretty good issue regardless. You hear about Fidelity's Center for Applied Technology, and both Stephanie Bogan and Deena Katz offer advice on how to narrow your focus and leverage yourself more efficiently. Don Trone offers a checklist for becoming fiduciary compliant, and Dan Moisand brings up a topic that nobody is talking about and everybody is facing: talk radio and certain TV channels are doing everything they can to paint a gloomy picture of America's future and scare older clients out of their wits. Of course, the older clients want to get out of the markets immediately--and how do you, the advisor, handle these requests. It's an interesting question. [Read more »] 

Dan Moisand must have been channeling the SEC's report to Congress, which was actually released two months after he wrote a column which essentially describes its tone and conclusions. I have to confess, two months ago, I was far more optimistic (and generally wrong) about what the SEC would come up with.

Harold Evensky continues to be the highlight of the Journal; he captures exactly the spirit of a professional magazine in his efforts to identify the most important articles in the professional literature and identify the most important debates. Too bad this comes out only four times a year as the cycle has it now... [Read more »] 

In this month's issue of Financial Advisor, we learn that TDA Ameritrade has opened up its custodial back office application to third party vendors, making it possible for them to create apps and applets for the advisory community--an important step toward the "app store" ecology that some of us have been predicting. Joel Bruckenstein looks at a software wizard that helps you craft your Form ADV Part 2 in plain English, and Gail Liberman notes that the real estate crisis may be hitting a new phase--and not an altogether pleasant one. And an article by Ben Mattlin chronicles the latest instability in the LTC marketplace. [Read more »] 

I think you should definitely read the Angie Herbers column in this month's issue of Investment Advisor, and also, while you're at it, read the end-of-magazine article by Matt Lynch, talking about how the up-front brokerage bonuses represent indentured servitude. His suggestion for how to disclose this arrangement to clients is classic.

Melanie Waddell's column looks at the upcoming report from the SEC about harmonized regulation between brokers and RIAs. It seems like lately whatever the Financial Planning coalition supports (fiduciary obligations, keeping FINRA's hands off of the RIA world, recognition of financial planning as a profession) receives stubborn and consistent opposition from the insurance companies, brokerage companies and... the Financial Services Institute, which represents independent broker-dealers and many readers of this service. I wonder sometimes if they ever look around and realize who they've climbed in bed with, and whether that means they're on the right side of the argument. Maybe they have...
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This issue of Financial Planning, sans new editor as yet, includes a really helpful article by Ed Slott about tricky issues involving Roth IRAs, an article about assimilating breakaway brokers by Schwab Advisor Services executive Jonathan Beatty, and a nicely-researched article about advisors dealing with clients with dementia. None of this is earth-shaking, but hey, the year is young... [Read more »]